City of Brimbank

A household is a group of people within a single dwelling who make shared provision for food. For the purposes of Census, a household is any group of people counted in a private dwelling, and so the number of occupied private dwellings is equal to the number of households.

Household composition indicates whether a family is present and whether other unrelated household members are present. Any household, including lone person households, can contain visitors. For the purposes of profile.id family characteristics are also included with household characteristics. Where more than one family reside in a dwelling, the household is counted as having the characteristics of the primary family in that household (e.g. couple with children, lone parent etc.).

The 'Other not classifiable' household category primarily includes those households which were occupied on Census night but where the Census collector could not make contact and a form was never returned. They are also referred to as ‘non response households’. For more information on this, please refer to the Non-response rates(opens a new window) statement on the ABS website. p>

The household and family data are essentially the same for both Usual Residence and Enumerated population counts. The person who fills in the form identifies all persons who are present on Census night and their relationship within the household. Anyone who is temporarily absent is separately identified on the form, so that the type of household and number of usual residents can be identified. However, any table examining the characteristics of people by the type of household they live in will exclude these people as few demographic variables are collected for persons temporarily absent.

Persons who are away from home, will be counted in the household they are present in on Census night (generally in a non-private dwelling or as a visitor in a private dwelling). Although the ABS will know their usual address, and they will be included in the population usual resident counts for that area, the ABS is not able to determine that person’s relationship to other people also resident at that address, so in this way, household counts are still partially enumeration based.

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